Eyal asked me if I'd like to go to Jordan Lake to get a few shots of the sunset. The past few days had had gorgeous colors so I naturally jumped at the chance. I dusted off my pathetic tripod and away we went.

Unfortunately, the clouds were not as cooperative as they had been all week up to that point so the colors were a bit disappointing. There were a few I took after this that had slightly better color but about 10 seconds after I took this one, a boat passed by and ruined the pretty water with the wake so they weren't as serene.

Eyal had reminded me about the "close the aperture down to get a starburst effect" trick we learned about in a class we took together last year so I tried that. It did slightly effect the sharpness of the lens but this sucker is so much sharper than anything else I've used it's still pretty amazing and the starburst effect is pretty cool.

In post, I decreased the yellow and orange luminance just a bit, increased contrast 7, decreased exp 0.3, boosted the vibrance and saturation a tad and cropped it a smidge. PLUS, I realized that while the woman at Southeastern Camera did a decent job cleaning my sensor, at f22, there are still a load of spots on that thing. I'm going to have to find a time to send my camera in to Nikon to have it cleaned by them. While they have it, they may as well give it a tune up. It really should be done once a year or so from what I've read. The good news is that at f8 and lower, the spots are not visible and most of my shooting for the next few months will be at f2.8 so that's good. The bad news is that from what I understand, I'll have to be without my camera for at least 6 weeks!!!!! I guess I'll have to rent one from Borrow Lenses to get me through. Maybe I'll try out the D3s. It's only 12Mp but it has 11 fps. Plus, I just tried to see how much it will set me back and they have no way of estimating that. I may have to wait until I can call and talk to someone. In the meantime, I will shoot at a smaller f stop and use LR to remove anything that shows up.

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I'm a mother of 2 girls living in NC. I've dabbled in photography on and off but really this is just for fun